As an innovator, with Home Office accreditation spanning over 30 years, Anthony Parfitt has worked on improving safety systems for Network Rail and the Police. He has delivered large scale Government projects, with public safety at the heart of many of his inventions. After the tragic events at Grenfell Tower and his own household experience, Anthony saw an urgency to channel his expertise, in the first instance to domestic households, and then the commercial market.
The idea for the CiTM concept was driven from a personal incident in 2015, when a water leak in his kitchen flooded the floor and water sprayed into a dishwasher, causing it to fail. The events could have caused a fire in his kitchen, had he not been around to manually switch off the water supply at the stop cock and the electricity at the consumer unit. Both actions stopped further flooding and any potential fire from escalating. It caused him to think about what the consequences could have been had those events occurred whilst he was away from the kitchen, or when he and his family were asleep.
He became aware that many household fires start during sleeping hours from faulty goods that we all rely on. He started to work on how he could use technology to bring about greater safety within the home. Then, following the tragedy at Grenfell Tower, Anthony knew he had to turn his full attention to bringing his idea to a working concept. He wanted to use technology to not only detect but also act, in order to protect families and prevent such unnecessary loss of life.